


Children of the Night

by khilari



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Multi, Prompt Fic, Ruka dies but he dies in canon, Sadness, There would be incest in this if it was sex and not blood drinking, also some werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 00:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18041993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/khilari
Summary: The vampires prepare for tonight's council. One, in particular, has plans.





	Children of the Night

Touga climbs in through Saionji’s window and manages to do so gracefully. Wasted effort since Saionji is asleep, half-curled like a dog on top of the covers, skin glistening with sweat in the muggy summer air. Touga goes still, like a cat above a fishbowl, fangs protruding over his lower lip. There are reasons he wants to look his best tonight, but the hunger driving him is very real. He presses the back of his hand to his mouth, blinking rapidly. When he moves close enough to the bed for his presence to wake Saionji there’s no hint of the animal about to pounce.

Saionji jerks awake with a yelp, one hand pawing the air, and then he looks away, embarrassment warming already overheated skin. ‘What do you want?’ he says.

Touga leans closer, resting one hand on the bed and the other on Saionji’s shoulder, stretching himself out over his friend. ‘You know what I want,’ he sighs.

Saionji tucks his head against the pillow, hunches his shoulders. ‘It’s not full moon.’

‘It’s close enough.’ Touga’s hand slides from Saionji’s shoulder to the mane of hair growing down his back, hidden by his long hairstyle. Touga’s nails scratch lightly at the roots, making Saionji bite back a whine. ‘I’m hungry.’

‘Aren’t your girls enough for you?’

‘They’re sweet but weak, a mouthtful here and there, it’s like living on strawberries.’ Touga leans closer, his breath would be on Saionji’s throat if Saionji uncurled himself. ‘It’s not enough. Would you have me kill them?’

A memory flashes behind their eyes. A girl screaming at the sight of a wolf so close, her heel snapping as she turned to run, the wolf leaping as instinct overwhelmed him. A cold hand catching the scruff of a neck, casting the wolf easily aside. Did it happen like that?

It leaves this truth between them. The wolf has come closer than the vampire to being a killer, as yet, and that he is not is thanks to the vampire’s control not his. He owes, and will always owe, the same chance in return.

Saionji rolls over, baring his throat.

There’s no dignity in this, although they both wish for it. Touga’s first bite is gentle, almost sensual, but as soon as he lets himself go past a few gulps he’s lost, his fangs almost meeting in Saionji’s throat as he tears it open further, gulping hot blood into himself as fast as he can. Saionji goes from gasping and shivering to kicking and clawing, limbs flailing like a tangled puppet, until the strings break and he falls limp, as empty as Touga is full.

Touga sits up slowly, stomach bloated with blood, and flips the duvet over the body next to him. Saionji will be fine, this is neither silver nor fire, and if he spends a few days weak and aching it will do him no lasting harm. Touga lies down on his side, rolling over slightly towards his front and draping one arm over his stomach almost as if he senses he’s being watched.

* * *

Juri sits by the fountain, although the moving water would burn her skin if she touched it. She is drawn and pale, hollow with hunger, fool enough to think she can live on mice and good intentions. The one coming towards her, stepping sure and predatory although he’s only human, is no such fool.

‘Juri,’ he says.

Juri’s head goes up, her nostrils flare, but there’s as much disgust as hunger in her expression. ‘Ruka,’ she says. ‘I told you not to come.’

‘Then why are you waiting here?’ he sits down beside her, using his greater height to loom over her subtly. Her fangs slip out in response. ‘You shouldn’t go to your council hungry.’

Juri ignores that, hand touching the locket at her throat. ‘I told you to leave Shiori alone.’

‘You’re so sure I haven’t?’

Juri’s nostrils flare again. ‘I can smell her all over you. Did you come straight from…’

‘…straight from her bed?’ he asks, amused. ‘Is that important? I’m here for your sake.’

Juri’s fangs are out, transforming her gaunt features into something monstrous, hunger and anger flashing vivid in her eyes. ‘I didn’t ask you to come.’ But she told him the council was tonight, didn’t she? ‘Leave me, Ruka.’

‘Come on, Juri,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing you haven’t done before.’ He tips his head to show the scars on the side of his neck, brushes his hair back with one graceful sweep of a hand. ‘If you drink tonight I’ll leave you alone.’ Juri won’t look up, her hand inches closer to the moving water in the basin as if she might burn herself to clarity. ‘If you drink tonight I’ll leave Shiori alone. Perhaps I’ll even let her down gently this time.’

‘Fine.’ Juri stands up and leans over Ruka, taking his shoulders in a grip that is meant to be delicate but is far too tight. He fights to stop his face screwing up in pain. She presses her lips coldly to the side of his neck, but she’s starved herself too long. How easy it must seem to take one gulp and another. What harm in indulging her anger a little, making him feel the pain and weakness he asked for? Rip a little wider. Doesn’t he deserve this? Lap at the blood, movements becoming frantic, hands breaking his shoulderbones in their grasp.

Then, suddenly, he’s gone, out like a candle with a look of satisfaction on his face.

This, then, was his plan. Having killed once will break her, Juri will kill again. Having started on a path it is easier to continue. He was a fool after all, to value her life over his own, and she is more to be pitied than the one who died fulfilling his plan.

She backs away from his corpse in horror, then tears the locket from her neck and throws it into the fountain before fleeing.

* * *

Your bedroom is covered in dresses, all too old or too young for you, as you’ve spent the evening trying to decide what to wear to see your brother. In the end you’ve settled on too old, since you want to be taken seriously by the council, but I admire the practicality of the scarf wound tight around your throat.

The excitement that brightens your eyes and flushes your cheeks when Touga steps through your window, his grace this time adequately appreciated, is less admirable. His recent meal has been digested now, smoothing and plumping his skin, bringing a faint warmth to his body. Of course, you’ve never seen him cold and hungry, he wouldn’t come to you like that. Not yet.

‘Big brother!’ you say, and he wraps you in his arms, even kisses your forehead with no trace of fangs. You shiver though. ‘Will it really be tonight?’

‘If Master Akio allows it,’ he says. ‘Are you ready, Nanami?’

‘I…’

‘Nanami?’

‘I want to be with you!’ you say, vervently. ‘I want us to be eternal together, but should it really happen now? Perhaps a few more years…’

In a few more years you’d be as old as him, already frozen in time like a dried flower. The thought that makes you uncertain only makes him frown, turning away until he can smooth it into a gentle smile.

‘Nanami, I love you best like this, my little sister. You’re perfect just as you are.’ He pets your hair, soft and almost mechanical, and I remember a time I could also have smiled up at a touch like that. ‘I want you to be like this always, for us to be like this, safe, forever.’

You lean into him, a little fool easily won over by spurious warmth and affection.

‘I’ll do it,’ you say, softly. ‘Will… will you be the one to change me?’

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I would never let it be anyone else.’

* * *

There is a musical howling in the air and my mind flits to its source, distracted, although it’s no business of mine. The moon is gibbous waxing, but this one changes as soon as the moonlight falls strong enough, earlier every month. She kills squirrels and leaves them on the doormat for her brother to cry over, but never birds.

The notes of a piano pierce the air with nostalgia, the same song, always the same song, as mournful as her howling. The one inside will not change until the full moon tugs his blood like a tide and then he will curl up beneath his bed and cower from his instincts until morning.

The wolf outside is the one who bit her twin, she was young enough when she was bitten to still share everything with him, and in love with the wild night already. He has never forgiven her and never will. Inside he plays the piano for the girl who was not a wolf, and outside she howls for the boy who could be one.

* * *

It is late and my mind resides in my body, although I would prefer to be elsewhere.

Juri is here, barenecked, well-fed and quiet. Those who might have challenged her before decide against it.

Touga is here, gliding through the throng of vampires with his hand on your shoulder, always between you and the nearest without seeming to be defensive. He is always one of the best fed and believes himself clever. Werewolves have only human lifespans, but he thinks that will buy him enough time to stop caring, that when he does kill he will be able to do it without regret. I could almost pity him for that, if he weren’t so determined to bring you into a life, an existence, he cannot fully embrace himself.

While your brother bows to mine you keep your eyes on me, on the fangs in my demure smile. I frighten you; I’ve toyed with you before and I’m not sorry, I hate you far, far more than I love you.

‘I wanted to ask your permission,’ Touga says. ‘You know how much I’ve wanted to keep Nanami by my side.’

My brother smiles, and if Touga sees how amused he is still he doesn’t take it for the warning it should be. ‘Of course,’ my brother says, and bows over your hand, letting his fangs graze the back of it. ‘I look forward to having you among us.’

You look quizzical, uncomfortable, and it gives me hope. All I ever do is watch, let my brother while away the centuries with his toys, but seeing you try to wipe your hand discreetly on your skirt I wonder what might save you. You are a fool, but you are also a child, and I would not wish my endless childhood on you.

‘Perhaps I should watch,’ my brother is saying. ‘Since it will be your first time.’

Oh, why do you blush at that, why are you pleased to be your brother’s first? It’s almost enough to make me give up on you, to put out the damp spark so slow to light. And yet, as your brother guides you away among tables that contain only wax fruit and flower arrangements, I smile up at my own brother.

‘The party will continue without us a while,’ I say.

He is surprised, but not displeased, to have me initiate. The door we walk through, marked with a rose, is the only door out of the hall besides the entrance. I smile as my brother lays me back among living roses, thorns unable to pierce my skin. You are human, the party is long, and there is something your brother has forgotten.

* * *

You push open the door hoping for a bathroom and instead you see us. We lie together on a bed of crushed roses, the scent of it mingling with blood. My fangs are buried in his left wrist and his in mine, our legs tangled together, our bodies breast to breast, the long curls of my unbound hair falling over us.

There is no nourishment in this. Once it was a way to share a kill, whittle down the number of them needed for our survival, but it’s been many centuries since we counted such things. There is no love, either, although some hint of sensuality has survived. His fangs can pierce my skin when rose thorns can’t, when even knives no longer can, and mine can pierce him. Perhaps that’s why we do this still, cycling stale blood between us.

You know none of that, you know nothing beyond horror. Your eyes are wide and it’s been so long since I was seen instead of seeing.

Your hands twist your scarf instinctively closer around your neck and you back away, the door closing behind you.

* * *

I do not watch you leave.

If you run to your brother instead of from him I will learn of it later.

I do not want to know the answer now.


End file.
